Election night hasn’t been a nail-biter for Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff.

Appointed by the county Board of Supervisors when Sheriff Bob Doyle joined the state parole board in 2007, Sniff got more than 60 percent of the vote when he won a full four-year term in 2010 and when he was re-elected in 2014.

That could change this year.

Sniff faces three challengers, including a sheriff’s lieutenant bolstered by almost $600,000 in union dollars and a former police chief endorsed by two supervisors and a former district attorney.

Sniff, Lt. Chad Bianco, retired Hemet police chief Dave Brown and sheriff’s Deputy Miguel Garcia are on the June 5 ballot in the sheriff’s race. If no one gets 50 percent plus one of the vote, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will take place Nov. 6.

Whenever there is a clear winner, he will oversee a department with more than 3,000 employees and a $688 million budget that’s responsible for law enforcement, five jails, coroner’s duties and courthouse security in a county of 2.3 million. Through contracts, the department also is the main law-enforcement agency for 17 of the county’s 28 cities.

A retired Army colonel and son of a La Quinta councilman, Sniff said his leadership has kept the fast-growing county safe despite state-level changes in 2011 that send non-violent offenders to jails — not prisons — for multi-year sentences, a federal court order that has forced tens of thousands of inmates to be released early to relieve crowding, and $72 million in budget cuts that decimated deputy patrols in unincorporated areas.

In December, Sniff warned the $330 million John J. Benoit Detention Center – an expansion of the existing Indio jail being counted on to ease crowding – wouldn’t be able to open when construction finishes this summer because not enough money had been allocated to train staff, a process he said can take up to a year. The county executive office is moving ahead as though the jail will open on schedule.

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Sniff also blames the chronic gap between what he says he needs, and what the county budget gives him, on raises guaranteed by county supervisors in 2012 to unionized staff. Supervisors, most notably John Tavaglione, say Sniff needs to become more efficient.

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In February, news broke that 25 sheriff’s personnel were caught cheating on a 2015 promotional exam, requiring the test to be voided and forcing more 200 employees to re-take a portion of it. At least four people accused of or who admitted to cheating were still promoted and no one appears to have been fired as a result of the cheating, The Desert Sun reported.

In an emailed statement, Sgt. Chris Willison, a department spokesman, said: “This matter was fully investigated and closed back in 2015 with appropriate discipline imposed where supported by sufficient legal evidence.”

Brown called for a civil grand jury to look into the allegations; a grand jury has already reviewed the matter, Sniff said. Bianco declined to comment on the allegations.

Brown has faced questions about his own leadership during the campaign. In a formal complaint, a former Hemet officer alleged his colleagues abused a prisoner, destroyed evidence and used racial slurs. Brown declined to comment on the complaint.

BIANCO

Bianco, who ran against Sniff in 2014, said department morale is at an all-time low.

“Our budget is being completely mismanaged to the point that money is being ‘found’ and used as an election ploy,” he said. “Our personnel staffing is being completely mismanaged, creating severe safety concerns for deputies and county residents. Our relationship with county and city leaders is broken. Our relationship with law enforcement partners is broken.”

He added: “Sheriff Sniff is responsible for the current crisis within the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Retired chief Brown is responsible for the dismal law enforcement service in Hemet. Riverside County does not need another politician touting fabricated and/or embellished rhetoric simply for votes.”

Bianco, 50, said his 25 years of experience in the department, including stints in patrol, narcotics, gangs, internal affairs, and administration, give him the background to be an effective sheriff.

If elected, Bianco said he would “not only save millions per year from our budget with a simple restructuring of corrections, I will actively work with (supervisors) to ensure our spending and personnel management in patrol operations utilizes the most cost-effective methods available to provide the most efficient law enforcement services possible. I will ensure we have adequate patrol staffing in our neighborhoods.”

“We are losing millions of dollars by training employees and placing them in a work environment that causes them to seek employment elsewhere,” he said. “I will fix these morale issues by providing specific missions and goals and then empowering employees to make a difference within our communities.”

He said he is “strongly opposed” to SB 54, the so-called “sanctuary state law” that limits law enforcement’s interactions with federal immigration authorities in an effort to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation. “This law puts politics ahead of public safety,” Bianco said.

BROWN

Brown, who rose through the ranks in the Hemet Police Department before retiring after seven years as chief last December, said he decided to run for sheriff after watching Sniff “systematically and categorically destroy the effectiveness of a great organization.”

“As a police chief, I have successfully implemented the cost-saving reforms desperately needed in (the Sheriff’s Department),” he said. “The issues plaguing the department are far too deep to be resolved by internal candidates. I will bring fresh leadership and ideas to a department in turmoil.”

The lack of staff in the department is due to a “sour culture created by Sheriff Sniff,” not money woes, said Brown, 51. “Once we stabilize the staffing and repair the broken reputation, we will again begin to attract the best and brightest to (the department,” he said.

“Furthermore, we will deploy more civilian community service officers to handle non-emergency assignments at a much lower cost. This will free up hundreds of deputy sheriffs from administrative assignments to patrol neighborhoods and fight crime.”

The Indio jail expansion can be opened in four phases, Brown said, and millions of dollars can be saved by increasing the ratio of correctional deputies to sworn deputies in the jails.

As Hemet police chief, “I led an effort to leverage technology and civilian resources to greatly reduce the cost of policing. I will do the same as sheriff.”

Brown added: “Every recommendation made by KPMG is valid and would save money.”

A key part of the state’s sanctuary laws, SB 54, “is a serious threat to public safety,” Brown said, adding he called on Sniff to follow the Orange County sheriff’s lead in publishing a daily report of inmates being released to inform the public and allow federal authorities to take custody of inmates who are undocumented.

GARCIA

Garcia, a deputy assigned to the Moreno Valley station, was unavailable for comment.

“The county has been built on a solid foundation but lacks efficiency and modern ways of practicing law enforcement,” he wrote on his campaign website. “As the negative publicity, scandals, lack of collaborative leadership, and budget constraints continued to arise, I realized it was time for a change.”

If elected, “I will begin by building positive relationships with community members/leaders. I will reestablish programs to assist in lowering crime rate,” he said on his website. “I will create a task force that will work with local businesses to prevent burglaries and lower level crimes. Citizens will see me at various community events across the county.”

Regarding the department’s budget, “I will analyze the spending patterns and deficits,” Garcia wrote. “Each time an employee leaves, money has to be spent on recruiting and training a new employee. I will make sure there is no incautious spending by properly aligning needs with expenditures.”

SNIFF

When it comes to handling the department’s complexities and budget challenges, nothing beats experience, Sniff said.

“I have served over four decades in uniform – as a soldier, a city policeman, and within our Sheriff’s Department – serving my country, my state, and my community,” he said. “I love challenges and am very proud and humbled in leading a great group of professionals that continues to do great work day-in and day-out … all in the face of tough fiscal cuts and the resultant staff shortages.”

Sniff, 68, also lauded gains he said the department has made in the last 10 years, including a better-educated and more diverse staff and “our award-winning programs in community-oriented policing and the subsequent reductions in crime.”

The biggest challenges going forward, Sniff said, include a shortage of deputies to patrol unincorporated areas, jail staffing shortages and the need to replenish regional teams and task forces hit by budget cuts.

‘I will continue to advocate for increased jail capacity,” he said. “But I will also continue to push and enhance other innovative, non-custody alternatives that help break the cycle of recidivism, save costs, and help our inmates re-enter society and lead productive lives in our community.”

He said he opposes SB 54 as “poor public policy” and worked with the state sheriffs’ association to make “positive changes” to the final bill.

Regarding KPMG, “very little to date has been produced of merit,” and any budget savings are the result of painful cuts, Sniff said.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.